This invention relates to metallurgy and more particular to methods of bonding different metals or alloys together.
Special devices require the characteristics of high strength, toughness and high temperature stiffness, while limiting additional weight and fabrication cost. Certain gun barrels which eject rounds continuously at high rates have this requirement. A fine degree of alignment must be maintained, despite significantly elevated barrel temperatures.
Previous work has shown that such a barrel can be reinforced by laying up a layer of long tungsten rods around an appropriately machine barrel circumference, sleeving with a steel tube and explosively bonding to form an integral structure. Unfortunately, the tailoring and lay-up procedure for the tungsten rods together with explosive bonding result in a relatively costly fabrication. Fabrication of the compound reinforced steel tube would become much less complex and costly if a simpler reinforcement were used and if the explosive bonding step could be avoided.
It would be desirable to provide means for achieving greater high temperature strength, and stiffness to other steel structures. For example, it would be desirable to reinforce journal bearings or ball bearings so that they would not go out of round during prolonged use under high temperature conditions.